It’s No. 400 for Lanka’s trusted lieutenant

By Ravi Chakravarthy

Colombo

Aug. 27: For someone who has ploughed a lone furrow for Sri Lanka as a match-winning medium-pacer on the unresponsive tracks in the subcontinent, Chaminda Vaas’s entry to the elite group of 400-wicket club comes as no surprise. The left-armer has, for long, been the fast bowling mainstay for the islanders, and in tandem with Muttiah Muralitharan, has been the dominant force in their attack.

Subcontinental wickets tend to either favour batsmen or spinners; seldom has a track, in Asia, been known to help fast bowlers. As on Indian pitches, fast bowlers in Sri Lanka have had the job of coming in and taking the shine off the cherry before handing it over to the wrist spinners. Vaas, for a long while, has been Muralitharan’s ally and the two have shouldered the burden for more than a decade now.

Needing two wickets before the start of the one-day series to join the 400-club, Vaas, who took one in the first game at Dambulla, reached the coveted milestone in the fourth match, getting rid of Yuvraj Singh in his seventh over.

From Arjuna Ranatunga down to Mahela Jayawardene, the left-armer has been his captain’s trusted lieutenant and has soldiered on admirably under trying conditions. Responding to his skipper’s call, whenever it was needed, Vaas, in an illustrious career spanning more than 14 years, has more often than not provided his team with the breakthroughs. He may not have reaped the rewards that Muralitharan, with 756 sticks, has achieved in Tests, but Vaas’s 348 victims in the longer version of the game, has, without doubt, been one of the success stories for the Lankans.

Vaas does not enjoy the cult status that is associated with Muralitharan but then the left-armer isn’t one to complain. At 34, Vaas may have played the best of his cricket but there is no gainsaying that he will continue for a year at least, provided he remains injury-free. True, he has cut down in pace, but that is only to be expected in such a long career.

For Vaas, it isn’t about pace anymore; deceiving the batsmen with variations is what the bowler is all about as Yuvraj will readily testify. The left-hander misjudged a ball that stopped on him and spooned it to Jayawardene at short-midwicket even as Vaas closed his eyes and savoured the moment. The Lankan truly deserves it.